Messages and reflections from the ELCA presiding bishop for guidance and inspiration.
Lutherans don’t often garner much media attention. In this country we don’t make up a big segment of the population. When groups of Lutherans began arriving on these shores in…
For many months now people have been asking for some kind of statement about the persecution of Christians around the world. It seems to be a straight-forward issue. Christians are…
“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and…
They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the…
Sometimes I just don’t get us. We are the least likely of all people to speak enthusiastically about our church. I don’t know if it is some cross-cultural Lutheran modesty…
A Christmas message from ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton.
It has been just more than two years since I began this call. I’m often asked what has been the greatest surprise. Certainly the amount of travel has been a…
O come, O come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear (Evangelical Lutheran Worship, 257). Advent. We were just here…
In her book Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote about the relentless pressure she faced to be upbeat while undergoing treatment for…
From time to time I am invited to celebrate congregational anniversaries. It’s wonderful to see the church in action and to meet members from all across the country. It is…
At a Conference of Bishops meeting a few years after the 2009 Churchwide Assembly, bishops shared some of the most outrageous suspicions they had heard about the churchwide office. One…
A church in the Northeastern Ohio Synod describes itself as a “50/50” congregation. It gives away half of offerings received. A significant portion goes to mission support, but the congregation…
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